Archive for June, 2009

Faithful reader Becky sent me some tips today about deals you can cash in on Father’s Day. Most locations in the area are honoring these promotions, but your mileage may vary. Drop me a comment or hit me up on the tips line if this information is inaccurate.

• Chick-fil-A is giving free 14oz shakes to Dads with their kids on Saturday.
• Free cup or cone for Dad at TCBY on Sunday.
• Carrabba’s: Write up a Toast to Dad on their web site and you’ll receive a free appetizer with the purchase of an entree.
• Outback Steakhouse: Take Dad to eat on Sunday and he’ll get a $10 gift certificate toward a future visit. More info here.
• Great American Cookies: free regular cookie with any purchase through 6/22 with this coupon.
• McDonalds to give Dad’s free Extra Value Breakfast on Father’s Day. [I'm not sure about all of the locations, so just ask the cashier about the promo before assuming it's available.]

Thanks again to Becky. If you have information, hit up our tip line.

A few months ago I posted an article about recommended restaurants nears LSU. This is a great guide for anyone coming to LSU for a short stay—particularly things like orientation, which is currently happening. One of those restaurants I recommended was Roul’s on the positive, unrelenting suggestions of other people. Today was my first experience with Roul and his famous hamburgers, but I doubt it’ll be the last.

Menu and Food

Roul’s is, pretty obviously, a hole in the wall. It’s a really tiny place—there’s only room for a dozen or so people inside and a handful outside. But what it lacks in square footage it makes up in taste. The thing about Roul is that he’s basically good at one thing: hamburgers. Therefore, you only go to Roul’s for these hamburgers. Sure, there are other things on the menu, but this is, ostensibly, the best burger in Baton Rouge—get the burger. It’s huge, well seasoned, with peppers at its core, and just so scrumptious. I just can’t believe it took me this long to get to this place.

Menu Selection Rating—

Quality of Food Rating—

Overall Review

I really can’t say much more about Roul’s. There’s not much there in terms of a traditional restaurant to review. I’d like to comment on the atmosphere or service or something else, but really there’s just not enough of an establishment to review. But the burgers—they just make up for that. I highly recommend trying Roul’s.

I have yet to taste a better burger than this in Baton Rouge, so until some other restaurant comes around to dethrone Roul, this is our pick for best burger in Baton Rouge.

Overall Rating&mdash

Urbanspoon Rating—

I saw this article on FoxNews.com about a 13-year-old boy who almost died because of fire ant bites in Central, LA. The boy was in the ICU and his heart stopped twice. I’d say that’s a close call with death. They don’t have an accurate report of how many times he was stung, but the count is way north of 200.

Fire ants are dangerous, so stay away, OK? Also, click through to the article to read some ridiculous statistic on how many people get bit each year by fire ants. (How do you measure something like that?)

Read the entire article on FoxNews.com →

Recently, I’ve been involved in a new web application called Newstwit. It’s an experimental news aggregator powered by Twitter. I’ve been working closely with Charlie Davis of Baton Rouge-based Liquid Ventures to develop this application over the past several weeks. And after many sleepless nights and countless milligrams of caffeine, I’m excited to introduce it to you. I’m really proud of what we’ve built and excited about the future of the product.

The Baton Rouge Business Report covered us today in their daily report:

Baton Rouge company simplifies news on Twitter
Baton Rouge-based new media company Liquid Ventures has launched a real-time news aggregator today. Newstwit.net utilizes Twitter feeds to pull news stories, commentary and user content into category feeds. Newstwit.net functions much like a news Web site, allowing users to select the type of news content they view, including sports, technology, science and local or regional channels. The aggregator’s Louisiana feed pulls together Twitter news updates from Gov. Bobby Jindal, several Louisiana politicians, Business Report Executive Editor JR Ball, Nola.com, WAFB-TV and numerous other state and local users. Charlie Davis, Newstwit.net’s founder, says the site will eventually let users sort Twitter feeds by sports teams and leagues. “The possibilities are endless,” he says.—Olivia Watkins

We’re just launching locally today, but nationally in the coming days. So, I ask that you help us out by going to the site, browsing around and dropping me a comment if you notice anything or just generally have any comments or suggestions. Thanks!

You can view the site here or view our Louisiana page here.

Grappling Hook

Today starts something kinda new for the BTR Toons. I’m playing around with some ideas and different illustration styles. Over the next few weeks The BTR Toons will be an on going story about our Red Stick Avenger. I’d love to make the updates more than just once a week, but I doubt I could keep that going for too long.

I’m also conspiring with Logan about a BTR Toons Print Giveaway but we’ll let ya know more about that once we figure out how we’re gonna do the giveaway. Have a great week, and feel free to comment on the new comics, or if you have any requests or ideas for future BTR Toons, shout em out!

Please provide a link back to this post and to EthanKillett.com when referring to this strip.

The weather center is a great tool that we offer on our site. This screencast is a brief introduction to the weather center and shows you how to set up Twitter to receive SMS messages with weather updates.

Click To Play

We’ve received reports that the producer of the excellent New Orleans Heritage and Jazz Festival is in preliminary negotiations to host a country music festival in Tiger Stadium over the Memorial Day weekend. Mayor Kip Holden proposed the idea to the Metro Council today to spend $300,000 to sponsor the show pending matching sponsorships from the Baton Rouge Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

This is certainly an interesting concept. Although I don’t personally enjoy country music, our area—and generally the South—has a predilection for this genre and so a music festival on the scale of Jazz Fest is certainly economically viable. Hosting it would be a tremendous opportunity for our economy and, specifically, the University. Plus, it’s about time we get our own festival.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, today is the big transition from analog to HDTV. As mandated by the FCC, all television transmissions must now be in glorious HDTV. All television stations in Baton Rouge are now broadcasting in HDTV, so if you’re not receiving anything on your analog TV, that means you forgot to get one of the free convertor boxes the FCC offered. If you haven’t already, please make the transition to digital and don’t call and complain to the TV stations—they’re just following the law. If you’re on cable or satellite TV, you should be fine.

Update: Gregory Schultz, one of our regular readers, noted that WBRZ will stay broadcasting in analog until 6:30 PM. After that, Baton Rouge should be all digital.

I just set up the Baton Rougean on Facebook. You can add us by visiting our profile.

Also, there has been basically nothing interesting that has happened in the past few days. What’s up Baton Rouge?

Sidenote: Bobby Jindal turned 38 yesterday, so wish him our governor a happy birthday.

The LSU powerlifting team is a jewel in the crown of LSU athletics—club athletics, that is. The team won a national championship this year and is a recognized powerhouse in the sport. The team is excellent, but since it’s not a NCAA recognized sport, the team receives a majority of its support from its team members.

I received a tip today about a fundraising event for the team at Buffalo Wild Wings on Bluebonnet. Tomorrow only 20% of your total dine-in or carry-out food purchase will be donated to the team. Apparently you have to have a coupon, but just mention it to the server and hope they’ll be kind enough to still donate.